A New Irish Tradition?

So, the latest issue of Mystery News (June/July 2006) came sailing through my mail slot today. Dominating the paper’s front page is an interview with Jacqueline Winspear (Pardonable Lies), while inside, there’s a lengthy profile of Wyoming novelist Craig Johnson (The Cold Dish, Death Without Company), a look back at the mid-20th-century works of Thomas Kyd (aka Alfred B. Harbage), and, best of all--at least to my way of thinking--an interview with Irish playwright-turned-novelist Declan Hughes. Hughes’ debut novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood, ranks as one of the 2006 books that I least anticipated but most enjoyed. It’s the tale of an Irish-born private eye in Los Angeles, Ed Loy, who heads back to the ol’ sod to attend his mother’s funeral, but winds up looking for the missing husband of a former lover, longing for answers to his father’s disappearance, and bumping elbows with Dublin criminals petty and prosperous. Although it owes a few rather obvious debts to Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, and strains a bit here and there to maintain its hard edge, The Wrong Kind of Blood stands out because of its protagonist’s mordant approach to life, its sharp dialogue, and ... well, the fact that it’s Irish. While there are myriad English crime stories, and a growing number of Scottish ones, Ireland hasn’t produced such an abundance within this genre. Hughes explains why, in his exchange with Mystery News’ Stephen Miller:

Well, first of all there is no “traditional” type of mystery in Ireland; the UK has its own tradition, but Ireland (a separate country in so many respects) has no great history or tradition of crime writing; it’s only in the last ten years or so that the genre has begun to take root. The kind of English mystery within a settled society where everyone knows his place and the solution to the murder restores order always sat uneasily in an Ireland that was making itself up as it went along. In terms of the kind of noir or hard-boiled P.I. novel I want to write, it’s been among other things a question of waiting until the conditions were right. There’s been an economic boom the last ten years in Ireland, leading to a lot of money being made very quickly, often with no questions asked. There has always in Ireland been the “family gothic” aspect--secrets being kept, skeletons in every family closet--the motto for years was “whatever you say, say nothing”--but in recent years these secrets have begun to be unearthed, whether they relate to clerical sex abuse, widespread planning corruption or the simple incarceration of an inconvenient family member in a mental hospital. The time seemed ripe for a detective who could be an outsider--having been away for twenty years, Ed Loy finds much of what is new in Ireland astonishing and disturbing--but also an insider--through his upbringing, he is connected to a wide range of people, from lawyers and police to petty criminals and gangsters. Loy--literally, a spade or a shovel--is there to dig up the truth, uncover the secrets and lies that Ireland has lived by.

Unfortunately, Miller’s interview with Hughes isn’t available online. But it’s worth the $4.50 single-copy price to buy this latest Mystery News and read the thing through.